GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Today's forecast is straightforward: mostly sunny, highs in the mid-80s. But unseen by us, it's getting a little complicated up there. For one thing, a warm front is slinking our way, bringing with it not just warmer temps but some actual humidity. Barry's remnants are going to be paying us a visit as well. The upshot is that starting tonight there'll be rising chances of rain, and once a cold front arrives tomorrow, things will get pretty wet. Long and short: Get out there today!Last Thursday's rains damaged Canaan, Orange roads to tune of $1 million. And that's just the start: The state's still collecting assessments from Groton, Hebron and Dorchester as it prepares to file for a disaster declaration. Canaan will need 3 months to repair roads and replace a bridge. And Orange? It "only has 12 miles of town roads. And we suffered an estimated half a million dollars [in damage] to those roads,” says SB chair Dorothy Heinrichs.Prouty raises $3.3 million. More than 4,400 cyclists, walkers, rowers, and golfers took part, and their total raised was a record -- last year the figure was closer to $2.6 million. The weather definitely didn't hurt this year.Now that's some serious Connecticut River eye candy. Speaking of the Prouty, remember yesterday's all-too-short video? William Daugherty just went up on YouTube with his full 9-minute drone video of the rowing event. It starts with the river in mist -- glassy, serene, a single sculler creasing the water... A fine and mesmerizing way to start your day.Sununu veto hampers Hanover's effort to replace streetlights. Last week, the NH guv unexpectedly axed a measure that would have let towns buy existing streetlights from utilities. Hanover's been trying for 8 years to put LEDs in lights owned by Liberty Utilities. “It has been frustrating to watch how slow and unenlightened the process is here in NH while right across the river in Vermont, Green Mountain Power installed LED bulbs more than 5 years ago,” says Town Manager Julia Griffin. (VN, sub reqd)And while we're on Griffin, in a VN op-ed yesterday she lit into Sununu for a series of vetoes. "What a way to insult the hard work of so many, arrogantly implying that he knows all while others who have a different approach are simply a sideshow," she writes. She's exercised about the net metering bill, which would have allowed larger-scale community solar and other renewable energy projects to move forward, and the vetoed family and medical leave act. "New Hampshire cannot afford to hitch its future survival to the career needs of one self-absorbed governor," seethes the normally measured town manager. Based in part on Dartmouth research, NH becomes 2nd state to lower arsenic limit. Sununu signed the measure on Friday. The new standard requires local water systems, landfills and others to keep arsenic in the water supply to 5 parts per billion, which is half the state's old limit. NH has some of the country's highest rates of certain cancers; Dartmouth researchers contend this is because its groundwater is high in naturally occurring arsenic.First cohort of low-income local HS students gets view of college life. Dartmouth has been running its Student Enrichment at Dartmouth program for 17 years, aimed at helping low-income and first-gen students get a leg up on college. This summer, for the first time, it's working with local high schools: Stevens, Rivendell, and Hartford. “I didn’t have anybody to talk to about college before," says Stevens rising junior Christopher Roach. "This lets me know that I can go to college like all these people did.” Bernie drops to 5th in new St. Anselm poll of Dem voters in NH. It's the survey center's first poll in a while, and it finds Biden still in first, rising numbers for Harris and Warren, Buttigieg holding steady in fourth, and Sanders dropping below 10 percent. Take it all with a grain of salt. Not only is it way early, but the sample size is only 351 voters and the margin of error is over 5 percent. Even so, expect to be hearing more about this one.VT auditor says state is mis-directing water cleanup funds. State Auditor Doug Hoffer has just released a report on the $66 million spent over the last couple of years to clean up phosphorus pollution in the Lake Champlain basin. His analysts found that most of the funding went to wastewater and stormwater projects, while a full 54 percent of the pollution comes from agriculture. VT Senate panel digs into proposed dairy merger. As you'll remember, members of the St. Albans Cooperative Creamery are voting later this month on whether to join up with the huge Dairy Farmers of America co-op, based in Kansas. Yesterday, the Senate Ag Cte went into the details, fretted about the fact that half the state's dairy farmers would be selling to one co-op, and asked some hard questions about DFA and members' lawsuits over low milk prices.Vermont Book Award finalists announced, including Jason Lutes' Berlin. The graphic novel by Lutes, who teaches at WRJ's Center for Cartoon Studies, is one of three works of fiction by Vermonters on the list. Ten books all told are up for the awards, which are organized by the VT College of Fine Arts. The winner will be announced in November.SO.... TONIGHT?You could head to Fairlee for the George Voland Jazz Quintet. Voland plays the unusual instrumental choice of valve trombone. He'll be joined by Fred Haas, who's played with some of the giants, giving up his usual sax for keyboards; Sabrina Brown-Haas on vocals; Peter Concilio on bass and Tim Gilmore on percussion. On the Common at 6:30, unless it's raining, in which case it'll be in the town hall auditorium. Or go one exit downriver to Lyme, where the Lyme Town Band will be on the town common. The band's been around (off and on, and with different personnel) since 1840, and it's got its repertoire of marches, patriotic songs, and band classics down pat. Community barbecue hosted by Mascoma Bank at 5, music starts at 7. In the Lyme School gym in case of rain.Or another exit downriver to hear Jayson Greene reading at Sanborn House at Dartmouth. "We glance around us,” writes Greene in his new memoir, Once More We Saw Stars, “realizing this is the last we’ll ever see of the world as we’ve known it. Whatever comes next will raze everything to the ground.” This is in the hospital, where his two-year-old daughter, hit on the head by falling masonry while on a walk with her grandmother, is about to be declared brain-dead. His piercing, clear-eyed book is about the aftermath: his and his wife's "bumbling their way," as he put it to The Guardian, to some measure of renewed hope and faith in the world. Starts at 4:30. Here's W.S. Merwin's "The Wings of Daylight," written late in life, as the great bard of dawn grappled with losing his eyesight. Merwin, former US poet laureate, twice a Pulitzer winner, died in March.
Brightness appears showing us everythingit reveals the splendors it calls everythingbut shows it to each of us aloneand only once and only to look atnot to touch or hold in our shadowswhat we see is never what we touchwhat we take turns out to be something elsewhat we see that one time departs untouchedwhile other shadows gather around usthe world’s shadows mingle with our ownwe had forgotten them but they know usthey remember us as we always werethey were at home here before the first cameeverything will leave us except the shadowsbut the shadows carry the whole storyat first daybreak they open their long wings
"The Wings of Daylight" is from Merwin's 2016 collection Garden Time and is used here by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.See you tomorrow.
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